


Pythagorean Identities

by alianora



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21821626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alianora/pseuds/alianora
Summary: Bran likened it once to one of the sheepdogs they used on the farm: Will needed to keep all of them in one place so that he could look after them best. Bran usually said this with an affectionate look in his eye, which made it hard for Jane not to react with a sudden spike of jealousy. She and Bran were close, true, and had been jolly good mates all through their awkward teenage years, but there was a special light in Bran’s eyes that seemed to burn especially for Will.
Relationships: Bran Davies/Jane Drew/Will Stanton
Comments: 4
Kudos: 57
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Pythagorean Identities

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leiascully](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/gifts).



Jane had grown up in a triangle, anchored on either side by her brothers: Simon-the-doctor, and Barney-the-artist. She wasn’t overly surprised when she found herself in the same situation as an adult, holding up the third side of the Bran-the-musician and Will-the-anthropologist shape. Her identity, whether she liked it or not, had always been influenced by the two weights that balanced each other out on either side of her. It seemed natural, somehow, to transition from the sibling-triangle of her childhood, where she was the heart to the brains and vision of her brothers, to being the heart of the brains and vision of the men who shared her bed.

At Will’s insistence, they remained friends. He had been almost obsessive about it – “Jane, have you a letter from Bran recently? Bran was saying…” It got to the point that Jane actually complained about it in a letter to Bran, so that they spent most of their secondary school years going back and forth about Will’s idiosyncrasies and how he was definitely Gumerry’s heir apparent as far as being a grumpy old man before he was eighteen. They had kept their correspondence light, ignoring any of the adolescent angst that might have otherwise spilled over. Jane was pleased to discover Bran’s ascerbic wit, despite the giant Welsh chip on his shoulder. She was even more pleased when they all ended up in the same place for uni, once again at Will’s insistence.

Bran likened it once to one of the sheepdogs they used on the farm: Will needed to keep all of them in one place so that he could look after them best. Bran usually said this with an affectionate look in his eye, which made it hard for Jane not to react with a sudden spike of jealousy. She and Bran were close, true, and had been jolly good mates all through their awkward teenage years, but there was a special light in Bran’s eyes that seemed to burn especially for Will. Or because of Will.

They’d talked about it, once, sharing a bottle of wine between them. They were supposed to be revising, but the late hour and family drama had exhausted both of them. Bran’s father once again had been ‘strongly insisting’ that Bran study animal husbandry to help out on the farm, rather than music, while Simon couldn’t understand why she’d throw her degree away on something as useless as Classics. Thus, instead of quizzing each other on their shared Biblical History course module, they decided to toast each other instead.

Wine loosened even Bran’s recalcitrant tongue, and once they were both rosy and warm from the alcohol, he finally asked: “Do you remember, Jenny?”

“Remember?” Her brain was having problems connecting with her tongue. There were many things she should remember, but she couldn’t, because Gumerry didn’t want her to. Or her own inner being didn’t.

Bran sighed, stretching his arm around the back of the sofa until it curled around her shoulders. She rested her head on his shoulder, feeling somewhat lopsided, like they were lacking somehow.

“Do you remember? Will, blazing like a beacon of light and shining with that blasted Force?”

They’d gone to see Star Wars, the three of them, just last year. They’d tried not to laugh too much at its earnestness, and only Will had really fallen for the heavy mythology of it. Bran, cynic and critic of all, would never deign himself to enjoy something as tawdry as that.

Or would he?

Jane thought hard. She remembered flashes: swimming in the ocean with a great green creature, clothed in branches; a golden cup wreathed in light; a train that seemed to be taking her to her doom, never stopping… Barney had similar visions, but they all blamed them on Barney’s ‘artistic tendencies.’ But Bran? Pragmatic Bran?

“I don’t remember…” she said slowly. “But I know. Does that make sense?”

And Bran’s tawny eyes, open and honest for once, looked like they understood.

They never confronted Will on it, because they knew they’d never get a straight answer. When Will had seen Bran coming out of Jane’s room in the residence hall the next morning, Will never said a word. He only smiled that secretive smile of his. When she and Bran insisted on dragging him out of his room to dinner, to the cinema, to the local museum, or even for a walk, Will protested at every step, insisting that he ‘didn’t want to interrupt’ their time together. But Bran and Jane’s time together didn’t always work, not as well as when the three of them were together. After much fighting and even more wine one night, she and Bran came to a conclusion: they were a triangle, and they needed Will to maintain their strong shape, because otherwise, they’d fall apart.

Jane knew the insanity of it all. Bran was destined for Snowdonia. She wanted to tackle graduate studies. Will would pop in and out of their lives as he embarked on his own anthropological journey, slipping into their bed with stories from far-away lands, telling them everything while his eyes said nothing. She and Bran would fight and bicker and laugh and cry, and they would wait until Will’s mellowing force came between them again to settle things, until next time.

There would be that stretch of three years where Bran went home in a huff to Clwyd, teaching music at the local primary school while Jane tried to figure out why ancient languages called to her so. Bran would discover that the farm did quite well without him, and that even gruff, silent Mr. Davies was willing to let Bran seek out his destiny. They would, eventually, settle at a little farm near Buckinghamshire, just far enough for Jane to commute into Oxford three times a week for coursework while Bran did his best to raise rabbits and dogs, while still teaching his beloved music.

And when they needed him, Will would come, sunburnt and smelling of the sea, to warm their bed and calm their hearts.

He never told them, exactly, what he did or where he went. He never explained those flashes of childhood that would come back to them, interrupting their dreams. When he first returned to them, he was always distant as Gumerry had been, a far-away look in his innocuous blue eyes. But when he left them, in Jane’s mind Will looked more human again.

“You ground me,” he said once, as he lay between them. Jane and Bran each bracketed his body like protective parenthesis, or like the two tall sides forming an isosceles triangle.

“You give us a foundation,” Jane replied with a small smile, kissing him gently. Bran’s eyes met hers over the top of Will’s head, full of agreement.

Her destiny was triangular, and she was okay with that. These men had been the two sides of her soul since they were young. She was grateful that, even for just small moments, she got to keep them.


End file.
